Blackhawks rewind: Wild series

Wobbly Wild give Hawks a wake-up call, but penalty kill steps up

On the day before it all ended, Joel Quenneville reflected on where it began, and the otherwise benign first-round, one-versus-eight TKO that spurred the Blackhawks into history.

"The Minnesota series got our attention," Quenneville said succinctly.

The reward for a shimmering regular season was the Wild, the wobbly No. 8 seed in the Western Conference, a team with two $98 million free agents and an uneven, undulating season to show for it. They stumbled into a playoff spot, really, having had the chance to clinch on home ice in the penultimate regular season game and getting blown out instead.

Yet the Hawks ultimately putting together the 4-1 series win belied some of the angst that came along with it, that maybe set the groundwork for whatever identity crisis was to come. The Hawks perhaps believed they could rumble through the postseason unimpeded. They got a little push-back from the Wild.

"We worked hard all year to get here and that was a tough team we competed against for five games," Hawks captain Jonathan Toews said. "We'll be excited about this one and we need to carry that excitement and energy and use it to our advantage against our next opponent."

Before the first puck drop, the Hawks were handed a seemingly gilded path to the conference semifinals: In the warm-ups before Game 1, Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom — who had started 41 of 48 games during the regular season — slid to his right and slid directly out of the lineup as a result.

The defensive-minded, measured-pace Wild had lost their backstop (in what was later revealed to be a sports hernia that necessitated surgery) just before contending with one of the most prolific offenses in the league.

Enter Josh Harding, who had revealed his battle with multiple sclerosis only during the lockout, and who had played in all of five games during the season.

"It's hard to sit here and try to paint an accurate picture of what he's gone through, because I have no idea, we have no idea," Wild coach Mike Yeo said. "He's a guy that, certainly, for many reasons you're rooting for."

Then the playoff journey began. And Hawks goalie Corey Crawford — at the time still haunted by the postseason failures from 2012, still fresh in everyone's consciousness — surrendered a goal on the first shot he faced.

Still, things would proceed, even if they proceeded with a few more fits and starts than the President's Trophy winners might expect. The Hawks would take Game 1 in a tight 2-1 overtime win, and they would protect home ice in Game 2 as well, with a 5-2 detonation.

The work was done, and the work had just begun.

The ensuing trip to Minnesota began a pattern that would dog the Hawks throughout the postseason: A Game 3 swoon once a series shifted to unfamiliar ice. It was nothing too unexpected given the rhythm of any series, but a ragged Hawks performance in a 3-2 overtime loss at Xcel Energy Center allowed the Wild a speck of hope.

That hope would soon be squeezed out of the Wild, thanks to an asphyxiating defensive approach to the top scorers on a team that had enough trouble scoring as it was.

Zach Parise, one of those two massive free agent signings along with defenseman Ryan Suter, would wind up with one goal and a minus-7 rating in the series. Mikko Koivu, the Wild captain, would finish the series with zero points and a minus-6 rating.

And the Hawks penalty kill stepped front and center, snaring everyone's attention by carrying its stellar play from the regular season into the playoffs and denying every one of the Wild's 17 power play chances in the series.

So the Hawks would claim Game 4 with a 3-0 win — in which Harding left after the first period, giving way to backup-backup Darcy Kuemper — and then end everything in Game 5 with a 5-1 victory back at the United Center.

"It's been a while since we won a playoff series," said winger Patrick Sharp, who recovered from a late-season injury to explode with five goals in the first round. "We'd been reminded of that a few times, so it was a great opportunity to close one out on home ice."